briefs

The wing was mated to the fuselage of the prototype Cessna Mustang very light jet earlier this month, Cessna said. Five airframes are in various stages of assembly at Cessna’s Pawnee facility in Wichita, Kan. Once completed, three airframes will be used for flight testing and two airframes will be used for structural testing. Cessna […]

New aircraft orders reached an all-time high of 733 in 2004, Cirrus Design Corp. reported on Saturday. The figure represents an increase of 69 percent, or 301 more aircraft ordered than in 2003. The company also set a new monthly record of 102 new aircraft orders in December. Cirrus attributes the growth to maturity of […]

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__________WHAT’S NEW What’s New — Products and Services for JanuaryThis month AVweb’s survey of the latest products and services for pilots, mechanics and aircraft owners brings you a handheld nav/com, a pilot’s PDA with GPS, an oil filter wrench and much more. ________TRAINING The Cessna, The Sky … and the Cartoonist: Chapters Thirteen, Fourteen and […]

In the last issue of AVweb we got our Challenger accidents mixed up. A previous incident in which the pilot reported he couldn’t rotate the airplane on takeoff happened at Teterboro in December 2003, not in Colorado last November as we stated.

There’s still time to participate in the engine-shop survey being conducted by Aviation Consumer, AVweb‘s sister publication. If you haven’t already responded, they’d like to hear from you about your recent experiences with engine overhauls or factory remans. You don’t have to be a subscriber; simply log on to AviationConsumer.com and tell them what you […]

Survivors of a crash of a Cessna 180 skydiving plane in Pennsylvania last October say they don’t fault the pilot … even though he was flying with a revoked medical for a heart condition, had vision corrected to no better than 20/40, clipped trees on takeoff from his own 1,515-foot grass strip (its condition is […]

There’s no end of innovation in the world, and here are a few interesting gadgets for aviators that we’ve run across lately. The Flightcell unit, made in New Zealand, allows pilots to use a cellphone or satphone through their headset, while remaining connected to the radios — perfectly legal down under, but in the U.S., […]

On Sunday night, the pilot of a Cirrus SR-22 en route from Reno, Nev., to Oakland, Calif., at about 16,000 feet, told controllers at Oakland Center his wings were icing up and he was going down. The wreckage, the parachute and the pilot’s body were found early Monday in a remote area of the Sugar […]